…by Dr. Declan Hayes, Ireland

First published 15 January 2022

[ Editor’s Note: Dr. Hayes has taught finance in universities around the world. During our hectic day as monitors of the Syrian election in 2014, we did not have much time to cross-pollinate each other at that time.

VT has always had light coverage of the EU over the years, and I thought it was time we try to fill in that void during these unpredictable geopolitical times that we live in. I asked him if he could provide us with some coverage there and he graciously accepted, so VT will look forward to his future material.



With Trump off the slate to no longer embarrass the country at EU events where he was capable of saying any damn thing that came into his mind due to his desire to always be in the news as the Great Thinker, he proved explicitly that he is not.

We have gotten through Brexit without too much damage, but challenges remain, not the least of which is a JCPOA in a coma that would be to all of our benefits to resurrect from the grave. If we don’t, we may end up occupying a diplomatic graveyardJim W. Dean ]

Declan in Syria. There is no substitute for being there when it comes to getting solid information.

Following the Third Reich’s unconditional defeat in the 1914-45 European Civil War, her elites brushed themselves down and took stock so that they could rise again from Hitler’s ashes. Europe was a shambles.

Bankrupted Britain stood poised to lose her empire, the French Army, the world’s largest in 1940, had been thoroughly routed, Germany was in poor fettle and the two external powers of the United States and the Soviet Union effectively ruled the European roost.

Although a new economic order, factored around the Bretton Woods Institutions and the United Nations were being formed, and although the US’ two atomic attacks on Japan had shown a new military reality was dawning, Europe would only be bit players on the world stage unless old enmities were put to bed.

From those cold realities emerged the 1957 Treaty of Rome, which established the European Economic Community, which has since evolved into today’s European Union, complete with its own flag, its own central bank, and its own efforts to create its own army to be on a par with that of the US and NATO.

Examining its flag, its central bank, and its military machine shows the pressures Europe’s Fourth Reich labor under. Although the EU is comprised of 27 nations (down from 28 since Britain recently jumped ship), France and Germany not only control it but as often as not make it subservient to their own national interests.

Although France’s political pretensions dictate foreign policy, Germany’s phobia of inflation has meant that the EU’s Central Bank has always emphasized the importance of low-interest rates and a stable exchange rate, much as the Federal Republic of Germany did previously.

Although that policy suits Germany, the Netherlands, Finland, and some other satellite nations, it was harmful to the Brits and will be just as lethal to the EU’s soft Mediterranean underbelly of Spain, Portugal, Italy, Cyprus, Malta, Greece, and whatever other semi-developed countries can join the Club as junior members.

This Two Europes reality, coupled with the EU’s insistence on the free flow of capital and labor, has meant an influx of both into cash-rich Germany, the Netherlands and the EU’s other strong economies.

The problem with this influx of economic and other refugees into the Fourth Reich is, as with the Third Reich, they do not supply anywhere near enough of what is really needed. Although German engineering is still world-class, for every German engineer that can be thrown at a problem, China can throw twenty.

And, though German (Danish, Dutch and Swiss) engineering remains world-class, the same cannot be said in software development, where India and other countries with deep and focused human resources are powering ahead. Germany’s leaders are in essence, in the same pickle they were in the summer of 1918 and spring of 1945. They lack the requisite resources.

What then of the military, of Europe recreating its old glories by the saber and the sword? Alas, because the British have flown the coop, the EU can expect Perfidious Albion to continue to make her own exclusive deals with the US military complex and other heavy hitters.

Although the EU can still make great weapons, not only can they not make the complicated systems that today’s great powers need but the need to farm any contracts out between Spain, Italy, France, Germany, the Benelux countries, the Nordics and God knows who else signals they will not be able to compete in the foreseeable future either. They will not, in other words, be able to project hard power.

And what then of soft power? Hollywood still has the movies sewn up, Japan has Hello Kitty, China has its own quirky stuff happening, England has its soccer and France has the Eiffel Tower. And Euro Disney.

To put that another way, though even the smallest of European nations has a soft power imprint, the EU has none. We can think of German beers, French champagnes, Italian ice creams but only EU waffles.

Europe has always lived in its own Disneyland, its own Brigadoon. Cheap German and Swiss capital, top-notch German engineering, and Dutch intensive farming has allowed it to drift along, carrying its own baggage and much else besides along in its wake.

If, however, Deutschland’s Europe is ever to be über alles again, major structural reforms, veritable miracles, are needed to stop this latest European experiment going the way of previous ones.

Just as with the Third Reich, so also with this version do economic, monetary, labor, and other policies lead into the abyss. Not since the days of Louis XV1 and Marie Antoinette have Europeans been able to have their cake and eat it as well.

One can have a closed, controlled, and convivial economy like that of Switzerland, or one can have a ramshackle whorehouse open to all like the EU. One cannot have both.

You cannot build empires on the ruins of ancient Rome or of Hitler’s Reichstag. You have to create anew with people who can deliver those brave new worlds. If you wish to find those people, you cannot go to the Reichstag or to the European Parliament. You must instead go to your own Silicon Valleys and invest in your own Belt and Road Initiatives, much as Japan did after 1945.


Dr. Declan Hayes is a retired professor of Finance, who has lectured in leading universities in Japan, England, Ireland, Mexico, and Australia.

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6 COMMENTS

  1. Well, “you will own nothing and you will be happy.”
    WEF-
    Common Market/Global Commons.
    And the Global Public Private Partnership (GPPP).
    A new International Monetary and Financial System (IMFS) will be “Building Back Better” under UN Agenda 21 and 2030 by seizing the “Global Commons” and connecting us to a biosecurity state, public health being the new global security enabling centralised control of the entire system.
    Universal Basic Income (UBI or similar state payments) will be paid with Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC.)
    Central Banks will use AI algorithms, combined with population monitoring (track and trace, vaccine passports or some other form of social credit surveillance system), to monitor and control all of our transactions, behaviour and movements to ensure our compliance.

     In April 2020 The Rothschild backed bank the Global Environment Facility stated:

    “In order to protect our global commons.. humanity must develop new ways of doing business to deliver transformational change in food, energy, urban, and production and consumption systems. It will take coalitions that bring together governments, businesses, finance, and citizens to realize this goal.”

    Erm, so there it is…
    Controlled Demolition.

  2. 1. The ideas of creating the European Union may have had the good intentions of the new Babylon, but they turned out to have Babylon (we know this from the biblical story).
    The European Union has never been united and equal. Western Europe, which was dominated by developed and rich countries such as France, Great Britain, Germany, Switzerland, etc. But there was also eastern Europe. Those who lived poorer, tried to go to the west to work, and generally lived on subsidies and handouts. Because countries like Greece or Lithuania or Romania will never compare in economic power with the same France or Germany. The question is – why then such freeloaders? What is the use of them if they produce almost nothing, but only ask?

    • 2. But the idea of eurosolidarity did not pay attention to this. It was the same in Soviet times. There were three locomotives: Russia, Ukraine, Belarus. These three sisters provided the rest of the republic with finance, technology, built factories, dams, nuclear power plants, and introduced production. If it were not for the USSR, then in some republics of the former USSR (I will not name them) the local population would still ride donkeys and, sorry, they would dig holes in deserts for toilets, as in the Stone Age.
      It is very difficult to honestly and equally create and maintain such large unions from countries so diametrically opposed in economy, culture, and abilities. And even with such a policy of Brussels. Merkel told migrants from Africa and the Middle East – we will accept you, welcome… And did she ask Greece, Poland, Italy, etc. – why do they need this wild horde?
      Always in such a big gang someone will be unhappy..

    • Eastern Europe was always designed to be NATO’s sacrificial battleground to destroy a theoretical invading Russian force at the lowest cost to Europe in damage. Yeltsin was the perfect stooge for the time and was a disaster for his country. A wiser leader would had gotten a treaty.

  3. I don’t know if I would call that a hard slap in the face, or a bucket of cold ice water.
    But it surely was a bit more than a nudge on the shoulder.
    💪👀🤔

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